Colchester Colts win Eastern Counties Cup (From Gazette)

Colchester Colts win Eastern Counties Cup

11:31am Thursday 2nd April 2009 in

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COLCHESTER Rugby Club’s under-19s warmed up for their National Colts Cup semi-final at Old Albanians on Sunday by wining the Eastern Counties Cup.

They met Shelford in a replay of the 2008 final, but unlike last year’s result, this was never in doubt as Colchester quickly asserted themselves and never looked back.

Despite many changes to the starting side, the usual fluency quickly emerged and full-back Damien Brambley scored the opening try after a great off-load from captain James Mitchell.

The second followed shortly after when centre Matt Barnes out-sped the cover after quick turnover ball and flanker Dan Whiteman then scored the first of a hat-trick of tries, showing great strength to drive over.

Fly-half Chris Withers’ third conversion from wide out made it 21-0 and just before half-time, a well-worked line-out saw scrum-half Gregor Irvine touch down for a 26-0 interval lead.

The second half saw Colchester again steam out of the blocks and despite a little over exuberance seeing the final pass go missing on a couple of occasions, it wasn’t long before Whiteman bagged the last two of his treble.

Shelford to their credit, did show a little more fight in the second half, scoring a couple of tries but the game was out of reach as James Gardiner finished off with a fine individual effort to make the final score 43-12.